


i'm glad i didn't die before i met you

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, F/M, First Meetings, Hurt/Comfort, POV Alternating, Rebellion, Romance, What-If, multiple stories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:21:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4507569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What a stubborn love story, it won't listen to circumstances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. after the deluge, us

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I have written this fic before. I wanted another try.
> 
> Or: Seven Ways In Which Skye And Coulson Never Met.

In Istanbul he shares an umbrella with a girl.

In the picture in her file –which he had studied through airport waits and changing routes meant to shake off any potential tail, and now he's here, on the other side of the world to where his fight should be, and with his suit more wrinkled than he'd let it go in _years_ – she had looked resolute, somber, but way too young. She looks older in person, but softer too. It's not easy finding her; he spends the three days since Fury told him to leave Washington tracking her down. She's well-trained, or maybe just naturally invisible. Coulson doesn't think that's her power though – he thinks, a bit guiltily that a girl who looks like this could never be entirely invisible, training or no training – even though the file is lacking in specifics. Much like Fury's orders.

Lead her to safety.

And keep her safe.

"Where's Director Fury?" she asks, after she makes sure Coulson is who he says he is, that he's a friendly. She's thorough and careful and Coulson can tell who taught her.

"Fury's dead."

He watches the girl's face fall. He knows what expression. He's seen it in the mirror very recently. It's the face of someone who's had their whole world fall apart.

 

+

 

" _Skye_?" he keeps testing her name on his tongue. Alias? Codename? She has many, this is the one Fury used when he told Coulson to get the hell out of Dodge. "I need to take you to a safe place."

"Let me grab some things from home–"

"You can't go home. They might be waiting for you there."

"But my things..."

Coulson shakes his head. "I'm sorry."

He watches her swallow – her sadness, whatever it is that she was going to say next, Coulson doesn't know – and nod slowly at his orders.

"It's okay," she tells him. "I don't have that many things."

 

+

 

"Are we going to a safe house?" she asks.

Not a rookie. Coulson is the one who feels lost. The news of SHIELD's fall start appearing on the tv screens of cafés, alongside soccer scores. Reporters baffled. So few people knew what SHIELD was doing all this time? Well, _he_ didn't know what SHIELD was doing all this time, that's the catch.

"We should assume all safehouses are compromised by now," he says, realizing the oxymoron.

SHIELD hemorrahging intel on 24/7 plasma screens.

It starts to rain.

They share an umbrella while Coulson thinks of an exit.

"There's obvious," the girl says as they wander with no ojective other than escaping from some invisible pursuers, Coulson looking over his shoulder every few steps (is this what the rest of his life is going to be like?).

He turns. "The obvious?"

"If we can't go to a safehouse and I can't go back home," she explains. "We could always get a hotel room."

How come he didn't think of that?

 

+

 

He has been told to stay dark and all of his friends might be dead.

Not just Fury.

What about Commander Hill, what about Natasha? What about May, stuck in Administration once more? Is she okay? What about the friends who turned out to be enemies? Coulson got out of there before he had to face that, didn't get to play a martyr again. The tv doesn't say much, he can't see the faces of the traitors. 

It's better this way.

 

+

 

He watches her settle down in the twin room, looking at the white walls like she has never been somewhere like this. He decided on the first decent looking four stars he saw. He's been in better places. This is not bad. Skye chooses the bed next to the window. Coulson thinks about the practical aspects – and okay, better than next to the door. Though it's hard to feel like one could be safe anywhere right now. He feels like his skin crawls with the glances of a hundred Hydra agents waiting to pull the trigger on him.

He finishes hanging his jacket to dry.

"Fury's file said your power was to affect object's vibrations," he comments, coming back to the girl. "That doesn't say much. How does that work?"

"Not just objects but – it's hard to explain. Every thing in this universe vibrates and I – I can tap into those vibrations and control them."

Coulson gives her a blank expression. He would normally have tests, videos documenting the gifted's abilities, years of research.

"If you ask room service for some champagne glasses I can do some trick for you," Skye smirks.

"What?"

"Okay, come with me. It's easier if I just show you."

She prompts him to get up from the bed.

Grabbing him by the arm she leads Coulson to the bathroom.

She turns on the tap and Coulson is confused about what does that have to do with anything. Fury's file was a blank – the bare minimum to be able to find Skye and take her to safety. The fact that he didn't think to inform Coulson extensively of her powers probably means she's not dangerous.

Then something starts happening with the water and Coulson's already weird world becomes a bit weirder.

The continuous flow of water becomes a playful tendril taking shapes and making circles around itself. Skye's hands move and the water moves with her – not like she is forcing it, more like the water gently follows – and something changes for Coulson. SHIELD taught him that powers can be wonderful and used for a good reasons but they are inherently to be feared. You think about powers and you think containment. He doesn't want to contain Skye's powers.

They're beautiful.

"This is amazing," he says, only half aware he's saying it.

He can see Skye's smiling face from the corner of his eyes.

He doesn't really want it – this, what is happening, this _miracle_ – to ever end, but eventually Skye finishes the show.

"I can also provoke earthquakes," she says. He turns to her. "Yeah, a lot less graceful."

She gives it a laugh-snort, but Coulson can tell it's something serious, her power.

"Thank you," he says, humbled by her existence. "Thank you for showing me."

 

\+ 

 

The news keep talking about SHIELD. The fall of SHIELD. The _fall_ like it's something biblical, like they are the ones who carried the original sin all these years. Well, maybe that's accurate.

"You okay?" Skye asks from the next bed.

He watches the Triskelion in pieces, the debris on the Potomac like ruins from a fallen empire, or a gutted animal. Both of those might be accurate, as well.

But it's more than that.

"That's my life. My whole life," he says. He doesn't tell her he gave his life for SHIELD and was brought back from the dead by them. Somehow. He's fuzzy on the details and he hasn't asked Fury outright.

"I'm sorry," Skye says. "I can't even imagine how this must be like for you."

She sounds terribly sincere.

Coulson is a bit rusty when it comes to sincerity.

"You're probably thinking that you want to be there with your friends, helping," she adds, reading him with scaring accuracy. "Instead you are here stuck in a hotel room with a girl."

He gives her an amused look.

"That came out wrong," she says.

He looks at the plasma screen again.

"I was thinking I'm a little offended Fury didn't want me by his side in battle," he admits. "But he probably saved my life getting me out of Washington. I would have probably died fighting Hydra."

Because if he didn't die on that Hellicarrier when Loki stabbed him it must have been so he could help now, so he could have been by Fury's side.

What _else_ is he still alive for?

 

+

 

It's a bit better when they order room service. Food helps. Food always helps. He's a stress-eater and there's nothing more stressful than having your whole life dismantled and in front of an audience. Skye laughs at his fake name on the credit cards.

"What would _you_ have chosen?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Something fun like, I don't know, Pablo Jimenez."

Coulson chokes on laughter. "Pablo Jimenez? Do I look like a Pablo Jimenez to you?"

" _Absolutely_ ," Skye says, between bites of her sandwich. Coulson smiles. She looks at the bill. "Do you have a different signature for each fake name?" she asks.

"You don't?"

She raies an eyebrow in turn. "Good catch," she says. "Fury always paid in cash whenever we met."

"Yeah, he does that," Coulson says, mood more somber. "He can be a bit..."

"Paranoid? At least he always invites."

"He does that too," he agrees, smiling again, remembering. "When he recruited me for SHIELD he took me out for a steak dinner. I was eighteen and I think he was trying to act father because I had lost my dad. It was mortifying."

"That was Nick, all right," Skye says, dropping her head and her voice just a moment.

"Skye..."

"Are there more like me?"

"More like–?"

"I don't mean gifteds, I know there are. It's all over the news. I mean people Fury was helping hide. Are there other Phil Coulsons out there, with the mission of helping other people like me?"

The mission.

"Honestly I don't know."

"Uh."

She turns her face away.

They have the tv on mute but the news keep on beating the dead horse. Now the Army comes forward offering their irrlevant opinion on how SHIELD was a threat all along. Well, SHIELD was a threat all along, but not for the reasons pundits are discussing.

"I don't even know how many of my friends are Hydra," he admits. Maybe to make her feel better. Maybe because he needs it. "People I saw on the hallways, people who have saved my life in the past, and they might turn out to be – just –"

"Nazis?" Skye finishes when he can't. "That sucks. One perk of not having friends, I can tell you. I don't have to worry about them being secretly Nazi terrorists."

"I just wish I knew how many..."

"Why don't you call the people you know are your friends?"

Who are those exactly? He can't call Steve's cell number. Plus it's not safe yet, his orders are to stay dark until Hill contacts him. The news don't say what happened to Hill.

"I'm not supposed to contact anyone yet."

"Maybe you can find out," Skye says. Coulson giving her a surprised look. "The news said that the Hydra command gave a signal to the double agents within their ranks. Everybody left in SHIELD must be decrypting those signals, to find out who was supposed to receive the message. I'm great with computers, like weirdly good. And I don't need to do the job myself, just take a peek at what your friends are doing."

"You want to _hack SHIELD_?"

Coulson is appalled. 

And Skye gets this offended _you say it like it's a bad thing_ expression on her face and he wants to laugh but then he gets thinking about the names on that possible list, he wonders which ones will break his heart, if any.

"You don't want to know, do you?" Skye says, realizing. He turns and sees her kind expression and resents it a bit, it makes him feel like a coward. "I get that. It doesn't mean you're a coward or anything."

"Not today, at least, no. I don't want to know," he admits. He stands up from the bed, scrambling to get his shoes. 

"What are you doing?"

"I need to do something," he replies, putting his jacket on. "A thing."

"You need to do _a thing_."

He goes to Skye, curling his fingers around her shoulder. "Listen to me, don't open that door for anyone. Not even me. I'll take the key with me. And if you feel something is odd at any point, just run. I can always find you later."

"Where are you going?"

"I'll be back soon. Okay?"

She nods, clearly unsure of letting him go but doing it anyway.

When Coulson gets out of the hotel is still raining.

 

+

 

The girl wasn't lying when she said she had few possessions.

Coulson spent half an hour monitoring the activity outside the block. It doesn't seem like anyone has gotten to her yet. He had the advantage of a day over Hydra and even he had trouble locating Skye. What he's doing is a bit risky but not some much that he should start worrying about being too in shock to make decisions.

Still, she doesn't have many things and Coulson can carry it all back to their hotel room.

"This is what you were doing?" Skye admonishes when he comes back to the room, then she throws a towel his way. He's dripping.

"Well, yeah," he says, placing the box on one of the beds.

"You brought me my Hula girl," she says, touching the little doll with fondness.

"It looked important," he says, not wanting to pry any further, but curious because there must be a story there. Well, maybe some day.

"I'm sorry this was all I could carry," he tells her.

" _Sorry_?"

Skye puts her arms around his neck and hugs him. He doesn't think he's touched another human being in days. He stiffens at first then gives into it, even though his clothes are wet and he's prbably ruining hers. He touches her hair for a moment.

Skye pulls back and mutters _sorry_ at this sudden outburts. Coulson doesn't mind. It was nice.

She goes through the recovered items.

"Aaand... you brought me my hair tongs," she notices, beaming.

"That looked importat too," Coulson laughs.

 

+

 

He thought she was asleep but that doesn't seem to be the case.

She stirs under the bed and he realizes he's sitting too close. He could be taking the other bed already, get some sleep, yet he has pushed a chair right besides Skye's bed, looking out at the door, just in case. In case what? It's not like he's in a much better position to defend Skye than she is to defend herself. Or at all. Her powers could probably – but he doesn't even know if she uses them in self-defense, if she even knows how. She seems in control, but control does not mean usefulness.

And she's definitely not asleep now, he can tell. The light from the windows barely illuminates her face, but Coulson can see her gaze fixed on him.

"If Hydra finds out about me, about my powers, they'll–"

"Cut you open? Yeah."

He doesn't mean to be harsh, it's just what Hydra does. What extraordinary people like her have been exposed to all through history.

But Skye doesn't deserve the cruel image.

He touches the girl's ankle through the sheets. It feels like an oddly intimate gesture for someone he has known for less than forty-eight hours but it feels fitting too. And Skye doesn't seem to think it's intrusive or worse.

"Nothing is going happen to you," he tells her. "Fury made sure no one could find you."

"You found me," she comments.

"Yeah. But I'm one of the good guys. I think. After everything I'm not sure anymore."

"What am I going to do now?"Skye asks, more to herself than anything. "If there's no SHIELD, no Index."

"I guess you can do whatever you want."

Skye looks at him like that doesn't help at all.

"Why did you chose Istanbul?" Coulson asks instead. "Why did you move here?"

"That's easy," she replies, and he can see a small smile under moonlight. "This city has many names."

"Does it?"

"Lygos, Bizantium, Constantinople," Skye lists, with a very peculiar movement of her hand like she's trying to trap the sense of her words between her fingers and pass it on. "It's like one name wasn't enough. And I... I have had many names too. The name they gave me at the orphanage, the on I gave myself, Fury's codename. Some of them I didn't choose. But they're all mine. I just thought it would be fitting – hidding in a city with many names, like me."

I love the way you see the world, Coulson wants to say. It's an odd thing to think – the day after his own world has ended.

 

+

 

The room is filled with light.

"It's tomorrow," Skye says.

Yes, it is. He thinks.

She trying to shake him awake.

He looks at her hand, fingers twisted into the already-crumpled fabric of his shirt. She notices looking and she backs down, muttering " _sorry_ " and looking embarrassed, like she did after the hug. He's still in the chair, having fallen asleep at some point in their late night conversation. Skye is sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at him like she has been awake for hours.

She turns on the tv.

SHIELD collapsing is still making all the international front pages.

"Yep, your life is still screwed, sorry," Skye comments, trying to sound light-hearted.

Yeah, he figured.

Now what? Now it's tomorrow. There will be a new SHIELD, maybe. Or there won't and who is supposed to protect the people who can't be protected from anyone else. Fury told him to leave his badge in Washington and he did.

He thinks about that. A badge-less existence for the first time in years.

"I've no idea what to do now either," he admits. "No idea where I'm supposed to go."

Without orders to follow, without a mission, without his Director.

"Do you want me to stick around?" she asks, softly. "See if we can find a way together?"

"Yeah," he finds himself saying. He's not this guy. He doesn't take risks. He doesn't share hotel beds with girls half his age he's just met. Or he wasn't that guy. Then Loki's staff when through his heart and here he is. The idea of parting ways with Skye unbearable. "Yeah, I'd like that."

"Okay," she says, nodding solemnly to his humble offer. "But we should probably order breakfast _first_."

He _really_ likes the way she sees the world.


	2. white picket fence

Her face looks familiar.

She's crazy, definitely, but her face looks familiar.

Yet he has never seen her before. He wouldn't forget a face like that. At least he hopes he wouldn't.

The sound of bullets scying the air near him brings him back to earth.

"Why am I being shot at?" he asks the strange-yet-familiar woman.

His house is being shot at. His beautiful house. Bullet holes in that painfully chosen wallpaper. It took him a whole week to pick it.

"They want information they think you have," she says, positioning herself between him and the entrance. Him and the bullets.

Phil protests: "But I don't have it."

She clenches her jaw before answering.

"Yes, you do. You've just... forgotten."

Bullets fly and this bizarre woman grabs him and pushes him to the floor, covering him with her body, and she might have just saved his life. He doesn't understand – why would anyone want to kill him? Also: why would anyone want to _save_ him?

 

+

 

"I'm not some sort of super-spy."

"I never said _super_ ," she smiles. She's crazy and probably dangerous, but there's something warm about that smile. "Just spy."

"Whatever you people call it. I'm not that. I'm a high school teacher, I teach history, like –"

"Like your father," she finishes.

He goes pale.

"How do you–?"

"I told you. I knew you."

 

+

 

Even when she explains it all – and Phil doesn't think she's lying, somehow he has this notion that he could tell, if she were lying – and explains memory replacement techniques and alien genetics and she mentions that stuff he used to see on the tv, SHIELD falling (he remembers talking to his students that week about the Second World War and the SSR and people like Chester Phillips and Peggy Carter), it seems like something very faraway, something that happens in a book or a movie. Even though he doesn't think she's lying, and those are really bullets all over his walls and furniture.

 

+

 

Whoever was shooting at them – bullet holes in his goddamn porch front – seems to have retreated for the time being, intimidated by the young woman's competence no doubt. Her craziness, Phil would say.

"Grab some things, I have to bring you in," she says.

"Where?"

"The base. They're after you." She bites her cheek. "And what I've said to you – I don't know if I could mess your head up with that. We need some doctors to check on you."

He notices wincing when she turns around.

"You got shot?" he asks.

Her hand goes to hide the wound.

"It's just a scratch," she says. "Come on, we have to hurry."

He walks to her, grabs her arm gently and pushes it back until she lets him see the damage.

"You're _bleeding_."

She gives him a patronizing look. Fair enough. If she really is a super spy he guesses bleeding is not something that should shock anyway around her. Well, it shocks Phil. He's not supposed to have people bleeding all over his house (did he mention he just redecorated the whole first floor?) and he's not supposed to be cause of it.

Because she got shot because of him, protecting him.

This stranger is completely all right with the idea of receiving a bullet for him.

Phil doesn't get it.

"I've got a first aid kit upstairs," he says, because that's some small, manageable thing he can do right now.

"It's okay," she dimisses him.

"Not really."

She twists her arm free of his grip.

"Look, I would normally have a system to defend myself," she explains, sounding frustrated. "But I imagined you've got enough surprises for today. I just got careless. It's on me, not you."

"Fine, it's on you," Phil tells her. "But I'm still not leaving until you let me take a look at it."

 

+

 

This is certainly new.

A quiet guy like him – this is not something that happens to people like Phil.

Stains of blood on his bathroom floor. Blood _from a gunshot_.

"A scratch," she repeats.

"Stay still."

She's shaking, which is strange considering she just faced three gunmen on her own without flinching. But she seemed to lose a lot of that ferocity when Phil sat her on the edge of the bathtub to apply some much needed first aid.

Now he's kneeling in front of her, applying disinfectant he found luckily lying around in the cabinet. The cut is on her right side, right below her ribs. It's not too bad but whatever some people might think about public schools it's the first time Phil sees a bullet wound so it's all a bit bizarre. He concentrates on cleaning the wound, instead of remembering what caused it – those were real bullets, people were really shooting at him – and instead of letting what this person told him, how his whole life is a fantasy, get to him.

He gets kind of lost in what he's doing, very focused, so when he lifts his eyes he's a bit shocked to see the woman – he should probably start using that strange name she gave him, now that her blood is all over his bathroom – staring right at him.

"What?" he asks when he sees her expression.

Skye gives him a half-smile. "I'd forgotten how good you were at this."

"I've dealt with a lot of hurt kids over the years," he tells her. "I know how to clean a cut."

"No," she says, and gets this really strange look when she drops her gaze to look at Phil, like he's looking through him rather than at him. "I meant when we went on missions together. You always got my back. You were good at taking care of me. Like now."

Phil says nothing.

She's not crazy, that much he realizes, but – that can't be right, can it? All that she's saying, this other life.

He finishes cleaning the wound and gets some gash and tape to cover it, just in case, until she can get proper treatment. She's still trembling when he touches her skin.

 

+

 

He watches her roam around his house as he picks up a few things. She studies every corner with a curiosity so intense it baffles Phil. No one has ever been that interested in him. He doesn't think he warrants it. He's just a boring high school teacher. He's been that for a long time. No one has ever looked at him like this Skye before.

"These are your students' tests?" she asks, looking at the stack of ungraded papers on his desk. Rather reverently.

"I have to have them ready on Monday."

She lets out a tiny snort. "Sorry, I doubt that's gonna happen," she tells him. "What are you guys covering now?"

That's a strange question. Why do spies care what he is teaching right now? He indulges her, with this strange feeling that he is indeed indulging her.

"We're... the War of the Boers, we're doing that this week."

"Uh. I never got that far in high school," she says with a wistful tone. "I wonder if I missed something."

"Ask my students," he jokes. "They'll tell you you didn't."

"I bet you're a great teacher," Skye tells him.

He doesn't know how to reply to that.

Sure, he is a good teacher, that's not the point here.

She runs her fingers across his stack of vinyls. She makes a little surprised/satisfied noise as she browses.

"Art Tatum, the Rolling Stones, Bill Withers... you still have the same taste in music."

"You really knew me before," he comments, feeling like he wants to reach out and touch her shoulder.

She just gives him a sad smile.

"Come on, Coulson, we have to leave."

"It's Phil," he corrects.

She purses her lips, like he's said something profoundly hurtful. "Yeah, I guess it is."

 

+

 

They treat him like a lab rat, running tests, taking blood samples and keeping him inside scanners for a long time. He hasn't felt this intimidated since he had to sign up for teacher's insurance.

Skye never leaves his side and nobody seems to comment on that. If what she says it's true and she's not crazy and he has forgotten all about these people he wonders exactly what kind of relationship they had. She seems to know him quite well.

"Seriously we all thought you'd be married with children by now," she comments. "What's up with you in that big house alone? You didn't even have pictures of a girlfriend."

He raises an eyebrow at her. "So you're telling me that my choices are fake, but also you disapprove of them?"

"That tone. That sounds more like Coulson."

Then she drops her gaze and looks like the world is a shitty place and Phil doesn't get it but he would really want to, really.

"Why do you do that?" he asks.

"What?" And he knows when she's playing dumb.

"Do that with your eyes whenever I say... something."

"You've certainly become more direct," she says.

She is evading his question. Phil stares blankly at her, waiting.

"Look, you were a pretty big part of my life," she tells him. "Two years ago. And then you got sick and you had to decide between surviving or remembering. So yeah, you being here. It's not that easy for me."

He watches her drop her gaze again as she finishes.

It's not easy for her? Phil has never wanted to cause anyone discomfort in his life.

(What life? Is that even true? Maybe his real personality – this spy, this man people around only call by his surname – does not care about other people's discomfort. He doesn't want to think about that – he could be anything, he could be a bad guy, a tool. He can't think about that. He just wants to go home.)

"Back in the house you told me your name was Skye," he says. "I've heard people call you something else. Daisy?"

"Yeah, that's kind of my real name," she admits. Something about the question seems to have upset her. "But... I'm Skye _to you_."

 

+

 

He can't go home.

Not yet.

"Sorry you have to be stuck underground with us," Skye says. "It might take a bit to figure this out."

They can't return him to his old house, that one has been compromised (he's learning spy lingo, apparently, or maybe he's just remembering). And they have to keep him under observation for a couple of days, in case the symptoms return.

"What symptoms?" he asks.

"You don't want to know about that," she tells him, and he trusts her on that.

In this strange place everybody looks at him as if they knew him, as if he's supposed to recognize them but he doesn't. He draws a blank.

Except when he's with Skye, he feels monitored and constrained. Trapped.

People come and tell him about lives he doesn't remember. Friendships he's supposed to have cherished. His teammates, his subordinates.

"The most complicated thing I had to do in my life was grade papers," he says, amused _and_ horrified. "You're telling me I used to give orders to all these people? They look very competent."

"Well, they didn't always obey you," a woman named May (someonewho said she knew Phil since they were in their twenties) says.

 

+

 

"So this was my office?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"Impressive."

Skye gives him a tiny smile.

"It had to be. You were the boss of all this," she tells him.

The boss of all this? They all keep saying this. He doubts it. At school he can barely get the janitor to open the office for him whenever he forgets something in the office. Like he told Agent May, he can't imagine himself in that position. He's... irrelevant, and he likes that about himself. He doesn't like making noise.

The place doesn't arise any memory in him, but it doesn't unnerve him like the rest of the base does.

"May I?" he asks, approaching the desk and drawers.

She shrugs, amused. "It's _your_ office."

Files, and weird items he can name, and a framed WWII propaganda poster.

"You were right," he says, browsing through the stack of records. "My musical taste seems to be my own."

"The way the memory replacement works – yes, it gives you new memories but... it can't really change who you are. Deep down. If you are a bad guy, the machine wouldn't fix that. If you are a good guy, you're still a good guy. Even if you go from spy to high school teacher."

"Thank you," he says, not missing the implication.

She turns her head, looking embarrassed.

"And hey," she tells him. "It's not all fake. The last two years? That's all you."

"The last two years, uh? And here I was hoping that Terry Willeford was just a fake memory."

"Bad student?"

"Likes to make scatological puns with the names of historical figures," he explains. "Once he managed to swap my textbook for a copy with all the page numbers changed, so I would get the whole class lost whenever I told them to open their books."

Skye laughs.

"Sorry," he says. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. You don't care."

"Of course I care," Skye tells him simply.

He realizes something.

"Why is my stuff here?" he asks.

"What?"

"If this was my old office, someone else must be using it," Phil says. "Why are my things still here?"

"No one uses this office anymore," she explains. "No one really wanted to, after you left."

"Oh."

Skye crosses her arms.

"I know this must be so strange," she says.

Phil raises an eyebrow. "That's an understatement."

She nods. "But I want you to know that you can choose to... forget this too."

"What do you mean?"

"When we find a safe place for you, we can erase these last few days too. You can go back to being a teacher and you don't have to remember any of this weird stuff."

Skye sounds like it physically hurts her to utter each word.

Phil thinks he doesn't want to make the same mistake _twice_.

 

+

 

A big part of her life. 

He thinks he gets it.

He doesn't remember but he knows what it all means.

And his life these past two years. His loneliness.

He has figured it out.

 

+

 

She pulls away quickly when he kisses her.

"Coulson," she says, and he almost recognizes himself in the name, that way he says it. "You can't do that."

"I'm sorry."

Well, what was he expecting? He's old enough to be her father and yes, he does well with women (or is that another fake memory they put in his brain?) but that doesn't mean someone like Skye would be interested. Yet she's the only person he feels a connection to. The only person who feels real to him. And he's not just talking about here, in this base. No one before has felt as real.

"Phil..." she says. "When you were here – who you were before. That person never showed any indication he felt that way about me."

He frowns.

He finds that hard to believe.

"Really?"

" _Really_. And I..." she draws a long breath. "I don't want to take advantage."

Then he remembers what she said: the machine can't really change who you are.

Phil (or Coulson, he's beginning to doubt, he feels his heart beat differently) lifts his hand to her hace, stroking her cheek, asking himself just one question, the one that has been haunting him since she told him what had happened to him, what he had to do to get well.

"How could I choose to forget _you_?"

 

+

 

He might not remember but he knows what he has to do.

 

\+ 

 

For some reason the machine scares him more than anything he's experienced before. Fake or real memories, a shiver run downs his spine when he looks at it.

Skye is the one who puts the restraints on him.

"Is that necessary?" he asks softly.

"I'm afraid it is," she replies.

He nods.

She brushes her fingers across his wrist comfortingly as she finishes.

"Coul – _Phil_?"

"What?"

"Are you sure? We can still stop all this. If we give you back your memories you might get worse again," she says, resting her hand over his chest. They have witnesses – doctors and lab assistants and people who are supposed to be his friends – but Skye doesn't seem to care about that. That's familiar, he thinks, for some reason.

She looks scared and he thinks he remembers how he came to it – that decision. He thinks he remembers another machine, and Skye going along with it, just like now. More than going alone, she probably was the one who suggested it, wasn't she. Skye would be willing to give him up just to see him safe. Well, he's not willing to make that bargain again. Even if she is.

"I don't care, I want to remember," he says. Then softer, "I want to remember you."

Skye only nods at that, swallowing.

She gestures to one of the doctors – a young British woman – to commence the process.

"Okay, we're ready," she squeezes Phil's shoulder, her eyes back on him. He holds his breath and Skye's voice become warmer. "And when you remember me, if you still want to... uh, you know... then I'll be up for it."

He smiles.

The machine scares him.

But the future doesn't.


	3. Written on the body

"So. _Really_. Who's writing this?" she asks, because she can't be fooled that easily.

"I am," Coulson replies.

He's not sure why he's telling her this, why he's choosing to trust a Rising Tide hacker of all people. Except who else is there to trust. There's no more _people_. Everyone one else is gone. Dead or scattered. He's alone. At least this Skye girl has tried to help him these past months.

He orders another drink. He should be mingling. He should tell Skye to keep out of the way, now the mission is all his. Tell her not to interfere (anymore). But he doesn't feel like moving away from the bar.

"Thanks for the tickets for this..." he says, guessing an attempt at gratitude is in order here, and he gestures around, the people dancing and laughing and generally being disgustingly rich, the Miami tacky royalty with their gaudy clothes and all-year tans and sexless marriages. "Whatever this is."

"I guessed with the implosion of SHIELD you could use the five-finger discount rather than pay the twenty-five grand each," she says, like she does this evey day. Who knows, maybe she does this every day. He doesn't know her. That's the deal.

He looks at her. She didn't have to come. But she's curious. She would have made a good agent, Coulson thinks bitterly, thinking that he'd have offered her a job if he had met her before. Once upon a time. _Before_. She stands out a bit with her cheap fucsia dress but Coulson suspects it's the only dress she owns. Something about that idea makes him sad. He takes another sip from his scotch. Not that good, the liquor here, considering the cost of admission.

"I can't believe they bought we were married," he says, snorting, trying to hide the way that charade might have made the man he once was feel guilty. Maybe it's a good thing that guy is gone.

"Oh I don't know..." Skye says, smirking and scooting against him on their stools.

She flirts with him. She does that. Ever since they met. In another life Coulson would have either flirted back or been appalled at it. Now it just leaves him rather cold. He gives the girl a skeptic smile.

"This is kind of exciting," she says, looking around, rattling with that curiosity. "I've never been undercover before."

"No, I don't imagine hackers have much use for that," Coulson guesses.

"Well, it's nice to be out of my van."

She lives in a van, he remembers that from their first conversation, when he contacted her to see if there were more symbols like the ones he's carving out there. He was told this girl was the best in the world for that. Finding patterns, connection no one else would think to make. She sees things no one else does. Coulson has run out of good options, anyway.

"So you wanna go grab the painting or you want to dance or something?" she asks.

Coulson grabs her arm, finishing the rest of his drink in one go.

"I don't dance," he tells her. "Let's go find this damned painting."

 

+

 

"You know what this reminds me of?" Skye says, holding _the damned painting_ , crosslegged on his hotel bed. Her flight out of Miami is not until midnight and she wanted to do some work with him first. She likes doing that, talk things through with him, it's how she works. She talks and talks and talks, and Coulson finds it somehow comforting.

"What?"

She brushes the tips of her fingers against the carving on the wood, a design so like the ones he draws. Coulson feels a shiver down his spine when he sees her do that. It's unbearably physical, like she is touching his body instead.

"I think it's a map," Skye says.

He looks at it. It's the first glimpse of something good he's had in months. The carving mania is getting worse. Now it's once every couple of weeks. It's getting more painful. More distracting. He has started scribbing it on files, or taking a knife to the desk of whatever hotel room he happens to be in this time, carving in his sleep until he can't tell dream from reality. And now this young stranger, this unexpected ally, tells him _it's a map_. And Coulson looks at it, looks at the photographs, and thinks it might be it. She might be right. There might be an answer to all this. There might be hope. Uh. He wasn't counting on that.

"Hey, dude, are you okay?" she asks.

Coulson looks up in confusion.

Skye gesture. "Your hand. It's been shaking the whole day."

He drops his gaze. She's right. He just didn't think anyone would notice. He didn't think anyone was left to notice.

"I'm fine," he lies.

He takes the painting out of Skye's hands and puts it aside. He pushes her against the matress and kisses her. A very bad decision in a string of very bad decisions, but no one's left to care. Something is burning inside his veins, and at least this is better than the carving. Skye doesn't protest. She's surprised for a second but then she kisses him back.

 

+

 

"Is it true what this Talbot guy says on tv? That you guys are building another SHIELD?" Skye asks.

"If we are no one has bothered to tell me," Coulson says. He doesn't care. He hasn't been contacted by Fury in months (then he remembers he was the one who asked). He doesn't want to be part of a team anymore. After what happened to his last team no one has blamed him for feeling like that. He just wants to track down Hydra agents and do his part. The rest of agents out there – they just leave Coulson alone, mostly. Even May seems to have gotten the message.

"Well, it's not like you would tell me if it were true," the girl comments, sounding resigned yet slightly bitter.

At least she realizes what this is about. She might be the only person Coulson can trust right now but that doesn't mean he trusts her that much. Yet he keeps doing this. Complicating things, fucking her, being hungry for her. Offering secrets she never said she wanted. Secrets Coulson can't spare. Shutting her out on everything else.

"How's the carving going these days?" she asks, looking at the new pictures. It's been a couple of weeks since they last saw each other. He could say he's missed her. They're supposed to be here because of that, because of the new pictures, because of ticking bomb in his blood. Coulson knows he needs something else from her. She seems okay with that. 

"Coming once a week now."

"Must be tough," she comments, dropping his gaze.

There's worry in her eyes. Coulson doesn't want her worry. The whole point is that she was a stranger. He doesn't know her. She doesn't know him. 

"I don't want to talk about that," he says, grabbing her gently by the shoulder and pushing her against the bed, another kind of ritual to counter the one that's burning up his body from the inside.

Skye arches her body against him, wrapping her legs around his waist. There's something almost familiar in it, in her warmth, they way she says his name when they're together. Maybe in another life Coulson could have loved her. Or in a another life he probably would have never touched her like this. He slides his mouth across the hollow of her neck.

Skye sighs while she touches his hair tenderly. "Yeah, you never want to talk about that."

 

+

 

The walls inside her van are covered with the symbols, like something you would see in a movie about a detective trying to catch a serial killer.

"Does it bother you?" she asks, when she catches Coulson looking at them. The man he once was, he would have profiled her and found something not quite right in her carefulness for other people's comfort, which he has seen and been the target of in multiple occassions. 

But this is not that other life, this is his life and what's bothering him now is how narrow her bed is. He shifts on the thin mattress and their elbows bump. They both chuckle a bit.

"We should have booked a room," he comments, though the way it escalated –talking about the symbols always led to _this_ but never at a speed he could predict– it didn't leave them much choice.

"What? You don't appreciate the comforts of Maison D'Skye?" she jokes, sitting up and pulling up her jeans and stepping over him to get to the other side of the van. "You should know I have my own stove. Do you want me to make you a grilled cheese sandwich? It's about the only thing I can make with this. But you know, if you want."

The offer of domesticity should bother him way more than a narrow mattress but he doesn't let it. He smiles at her. "How many times have you started a fire with _that_?"

Skye raises an eyebrow. 

"You know, that's rude, you should never ask a girl how many times she has almost burnt down her mobile house?"

It should bother him that she makes him laugh.

 

+

 

"What's this from?" she asks, drawing the big scar on his chest.

Coulson realizes they have only fucked with most of their clothes on until now, carefully covering most of themselves. Precarious until now. Tonight it's different – their planes don't leave until morning – tonight they spend the night. Tonight is slow and painful and bittersweet. Skye is all soft edges and Coulson just wants to bury himself into that.

"Long story," he says. "I was stabbed in the heart."

She doesn't even blink at that. She brushes her thumb against the scar on his left shoulder.

"What about this one?"

"A member of my team shot me," he says. Skye frowns. He can feel a bitter taste rising in his mouth as the memory surfaces. "He was a traitor, working for the bad guys all along."

"Hydra?"

He nods against her arm. He doesn't talk much about that. Skye never presses the issue. She presses him on a lot of stuff, but not on the fact that he happened to be working for Nazis for thirty years without knowing it, or how he felt about that.

"He killed one of my scientists," he tells her. "Almost killed my best friend. Took all the research my team had gathered for a year. Huge win for Hydra."

"Did you caught him?" she asks.

"His boss. Bastard's still out there."

Skye strokes his cheek.

"Hey. I'm really sorry."

Coulson looks away. Things have been getting uncomfortably personal lately – the carving doesn't leave much room for resisting anything else, he's just tired. He's said too much to her already.

She drops her fingers to his abdomen, moving them over burnt skin.

"What's this one about?" she asks.

"I was tortured last year," he replies. Skye's eyes go wide. "For days. They left me for dead in the middle of the desert. Among old atomic bomb sites."

"Wow. You're a very busy man, I'm impressed," Skye says, giving him a pitying smile.

Coulson runs his hand over her body. She must think he's so ugly. He draws a hand between her breasts, over her stomach. Her skin is so soft. No scars. No blemishes. All that loveliness. She must think him so hideous in comparison. And yet she is here with him.

 

+

 

"Phil, Phil," she calls out, yanking his arm.

It's only when the end of the knife separates from the wall with a hissing noise that he comes back to his senses.

He looks around. He's in another hotel room. The remnants of a very late-hour room service on a tray by the door. Dinner for two (but he remembers he had vaguely thought he preferred when she made him grilled cheese). The unmade bed. And the girl with her hand wrapped around his upper arm, looking at him with those big eyes, worried about him. The only person in the world who knows him as he is now. The only person in the world who cares.

"Sorry. Did I wake you up?" he asks.

"That's not the issue here!"

She gestures to the wall. Coulson stares. He's advanced quite a lot of work tonight. He'd say about halfway of what he normally does. He's getting closer. It's almost beautiful if you think about it. He resents her for a moment, for stopping him. Maybe in a couple of hours he would have done enough and he could rest a little. Not sleep – that's gone. But rest.

"I need to know what it means," he tells her softly.

"Yeah, I kinda got that."

"Skye?" he calls, grabbing the collar of her t-shirt and pulling her to him, burying his face in the curve of her neck. She smells so good, it's so familiar and welcoming. He wants to stay here. "Skye – I can't turn it off."

Skye holds him, running her fingers through the hair on the back of his neck. She presses her lips to his temple.

"We have to find a way to fix this."

 

+

 

They do find a way to fix this, and they almost get killed in the proccess.

"Skye, you're not an agent," he argues when she tries to follow him when he finds Sebastian Derik.

"Neither are you," she argues. "And you can't give me orders. I don't take orders from you."

"This guy has killed people," Coulson says, increasingly frustrated. He got her into this, that doesn't mean he has the right to put her in danger.

"You're not _putting me_ in danger," Skye replies. "I do that myself."

"Skye," he says. Like it's a whole sentence.

"You need backup," she says. "And I'm all you've got."

He can't argue with that.

A few hours and some scratches later they do manage to find an answer. Skye is _almost_ impress with his SHIELD agent moves, even though he comes out of it with a couple of deep cuts to show for it. And they save someone named Hank Thompson in the process. Someone he doesn't remember but feels familiar. He's getting used to that feeling. Coulson doesn't know how the pieces fit – he doesn't remember any of it, just that he and the other victims seem to have something intimate in common. And that he's at peace now.

And that she was right.

It _was_ a map.

 

+

 

"So a city, uh? See, I was right all along, it was a map," Skye says, gloating a bit, after he's slept for what it seems a million years. Skye seems alert and tired, like she has spent those hours guarding his sleep. For all he knows she might as well have.

"Do you want to help me find it?" he asks.

"The city?"

"Yeah."

He presses his face against her naked stomach. He doesn't know how to do this healthily. This whole thing started because something was consuming him from the inside. The girl was just a palliative. Then he started talking. He feels lost – now that he is not going to die. Now that he doesn't have an excuse for being here, in this hotel room, with her.

"You know, Phil, I think you keep coming up with this stuff to have a reason to see me," she teases, like she can tell exactly what he is thinking (is he still talking out loud without meanting to? no, it must be just her), combing his hair with her fingers. "You know you don't have to do that. Don't you?"

Coulson turns on his back, looking at her face.

"I don't know anything," he says. "I don't know why I found you. Why you keep staying with me."

Skye draws a loving hand over his ugly body, caressing all his scars.

"Well, I'm planning to stay," she says. "If you want to find that city I'll help. If you want to leave it alone, I'm staying with you anyway."

He grabs her arm, kissing her at the soft juncture of her elbow.

Something is burning up inside Coulson's veins right now. But it's not bad and it's not alien. It's something very human this time.


	4. The Index

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Non-graphic mentions of amputations, experiments and general Hydra creepiness. It all works out in the end, but it is creepy.

The guy on the gurney next to her doesn't look so good.

At first she thinks they must have put a corpse besides her, he is so still.

"Hey. Are you okay?"

She sees his eyes start to move under his eyelids. She saw when they brought him in, beating him into unconsciousness so they can lock him in here with her. She has seen this happen before – he's not the first person they bring in and take away and she doesn't see again.

Which of course means the boss is saving Skye for something big, and they don't want to experiment on her before everything is ready. Yay.

"Easy, easy," Skye says when the guy tries to sit up. "They hit you pretty hard."

He follows Skye's advice and stays down on the gurney for the time being, while he tries to recover, moving his limbs very slowly.

She watches him scan the room from where he stands, that's the first thing he does when it seems like opening his eyes is not too painful for him. Looking for a way out, methodically, appraising the exists first, then the tools at hand. Skye follows his gaze and realizes this is not the first time he has been in this kind of situation. A professional of some kind? That is new.

"We're in a Hydra laboratory," he says, realizing.

Good, he knows what this is. The others that came before were terrified, and confused because they didn't even know what Hydra was or what they wanted with them.

"So what do they have you here for?"

Eventually he manages to up very slowly, tugging at his handcuffs for a moment. He lets out a low groan. As Skye said, he doesn't look too good.

"I died," he says. Skye wonders if the Hitler Youth might have hit him in the head too hard. "And my boss used alien genetics to bring me back. I think Hydra wants to see if they can replicate the effects. If they bleed enough blood out of me."

That's a lot of information right off the gate. He's obviously a bit concussed.

There's a nice undercurrent of black humor Skye instantly likes, though. She's suddenly glad she's sharing the cell with this guy.

But giving Hydra the secret of immortality? No, that part doesn't make her so happy.

"You?" he asks in turn. "What have you done?"

Funny, because she only found out what she's really here for _after_ they kidnapped her. All her life looking for an answer to her origins and all she had to do was die for it.

"I'm descended from a long line of genetically-altered people with powers," she says, repeating word by word what her captor told her. She tastes something bitter in her mouth when she remembers the way he spoke about her mother. "Hydra figured if they cut me open and put my organs in jars _they_ might get powers. Isn't it fun, being in the Index? Uh... I don't know your name."

"Coulson. Agent Coulson."

" _Agent_?"

"Wih SHIELD. Do you know what that is?"

Does she. Well, you can't choose bedfellows in these circumstances. Or gurney-fellows, she guesses. At least she doesn't have to explain what The Index is to him. 

She nods. The man gives her a grateful look, like he really doesn't want to explain what his organization is. _Officially_ Skye knows SHIELD is meant to be gone, fallen, but a member of the Rising Tide knows better, a member of the Risisng Tide knows there are small cells of agents scattered all over the globe, putting up a quiet resistance to Hydra's nefarious plans. Is that why this man is here? It doesn't make much sense that a random enemy gets selected for this honor by Doctor Whitehall. 

"And you are?" he asks.

"Skye."

He seems to accept the lack of surname easily. Might be the first one.

"Agent. And you're with SHIELD? And in the Index?"

He shrugs ever so slightly. "It can happen."

"That's how they got you."

"No," he replies, and something hardens in his gentle features. "A member of my team sold me out. Turns out he was working for Hydra all along, brought me to them on a silver plate. Grant Ward."

She rolls her eyes.

"Oh, I know that one."

Skye doesn't tell it's the same Grant Ward that makes her skin crawl every time he comes by the cell and looks at her. The way he looks at her. Skye is not an idiot, and she definitely prefers to have her organs in a jar to the sort of mercy men like Ward seem willing to offer her.

"So... Skye, is it?"

"Yeah." She likes how he says her name. Like something she might have heard before, in another life.

"I guess we both know what's going on in this place. Do you have powers then? Something we can use to bust out of here?" he asks.

She likes how he thinks; the guy before him hadn't been thinking about escaping at all. As for Skye... she's been waiting for her turn for long enough that she forgot to keep thinking about escape.

"No powers, sorry. The geniuses at Hydra didn't wait until they got activated before they kidnapped me."

" _Activated_?"

"It's a long story, I only know like ten per cent of it," she says. She smirks at him, feeling some of her old bravado come back now that she's in decent company. "I'll tell you all about it when we get out of here."

He nods and goes back to scanning the room for chances, while still tugging at the handcuffs stubbornly.

"Pity, I was counting on some superpowers," he says distractedly.

"Sorry. I'm just a hacker," Skye tells him.

"A hacker?"

"Have you heard of the Rising Tide?"

"Of course," he replies. "You guys are annoyingly upright."

"Thanks."

"I actually thought about offering one of you a job last year."

She chuckles at the idea. "Really? Imagine that. We could have been teammates."

This Agent Coulson turns to her and gives him a warm, encouraging smile. It seems so out of place, in this nightmare room.

"It's not too late," he says. "We can use your hacking skills to get out of here, once I've reduced our guards."

She widens her eyes. Well, if he really is a SHIELD agent, why not. He's what, late forties, early fifties? He doesn't look like much, muscle-wise, but you never know with an agent.

"You can do that? Are you some sort of badass specialist? Like Black Widow?" she asks.

"Sure," he says half-assedly, lying down on the gurney again. "Just let me rest my eyes a minute here."

 

+

 

They don't start operating on her straight away. Which is a mixed blessing because they have other tests they want to make – after she has touched the Obelisk and survived. " _This might take a while_ ," Doctor Whitehall explained after he told her the rest of the story about her origins, how he butchered her mother.

No one has touched her yet but the prepping is terrifying all on its own.

The more nothing keeps happening to her the more she realizes how much worse it will be when it does.

The base is, mostly, empty, and they have very little personnel to help out. She told Agent Coulson, before they came to take her into surgery, that she believes this is Whitehall's pet project, that he is hiding it from the rest of the heads of Hydra (Skye tried to make a joke about Hydra and heads and Coulson narrowed his eyes at her and for a moment she really believed everything could turn out okay) and only a handful of trustworthy agents knew where this base was, that's why there were so few people around (why they had a chance at escaping, or at least that was the silent subtext of their conversation). Agent Coulson, in reply, told her that this was probably an old, very secret SHIELD base, and the knowledge of its existence had probably fallen in Hydra's hands over the seven decades of infiltration.

The last thing Skye remembers thinking, before the two guards came in and grabbed her, was that it must suck, for good guys like Coulson, to discover they had been working for the heirs of Red Skull all this time. Skye used to think about SHIELD as shady and compromised, the scary guys in dark suits, she used to oppose them publicly and hack them every chance she had – but once she realized they were victims too Skye developed an off feeling of sympathy for the organization. 

But none of that really matters anymore.

All those hopes of escape – she saw them leading Agent Coulson to another operating room, she heard the screams and then she heard silence – and the very reason she is here in the first place. It doesn't matter anymore. 

She's not in pain but the sedatives they used to keep her down have her dizzy.

She's not in pain but they have made it impossible for her to know how much time it has passed since they brought her here.

And suddenly there is light and some noise – door, footsteps, she thinks " _it's over_ ", but the footsteps are quiet, like _trying to be quiet_ – and suddenly someone is next to her. 

She scrunches her face.

"Agent Coulson?" she mutters, wondering if it's the drugs.

He nods.

He touches her face so it's probably not a hallucination.

"Did they take anything from me?" Skye asks, confused, trying to look down at her own body only to remember they tied her to the table.

The man checks for injuries, running a soft hand over her body. She feels a joke tingling on the tip of her tongue – it's not like she can stop these things, she jokes, it's what she does – but suddenly she feels too sleepy to make it.

Coulson undoes the straps with one hand and puts his arm under hers, trying to get her to sit up.

But he doesn't get it, she is really tired, she doesn't want to sit up. She presses her face to the collar of his shirt, wanting to just rest. He smells sharply of blood. Too much, it's hard not to keep awake.

"Just hang on, okay?" he says softly.

She suddenly realizes _he_ shouldn't be free and roaming the hallways of a secret Hydra base.

She grabs him by the shoulder, feeling her fingers numb as they try to hold on, pushing herself up.

"How did you–?"

"I stole a scalpel from one of the doctors working on me," he says.

" _Badass_."

She feels like closing her eyes again.

With his hand around her back Coulson shakes her a bit.

"But hey, I need you to get me out of here, remember? We're teammates now," he says.

"Yeah..." 

She trails off, thinking, _that'd be nice_ , the kind of guy you want in your corner, Agent Coulson. She wished he had hired her back then. And the way he says her name. Yeah, it'd be nice to be on his team. But she's too tired.

"Come on, Skye," he calls her. "You promised you'd tell me the story about your powers later. Just – come back."

She does.

Something about his voice sobers her up in a moment.

Together they make it out of the operating theatre and with each step Skye feels a little bit more alert. Coulson keeps holding her until she finds steadier footing.

She notices the state of him. Pale as a wall. He's clutching his left arm, wrapped in a bloodied gash and sporting a make-shift torniquet. His hand is gone.

"Did they do that to you?" she asks.

"Yeah, they thought maybe..." he starts, then stops. "It's okay. We just have to get out of here and call in some help."

"Coulson..."

He doesn't look at her.

"It's okay, technology these days... I'll probably get an upgrade." She knows he must be lying. No one can be okay with a bunch of Nazi scientist amputating their arm. "I just want to survive this," he adds, as they follow corridors down to dead ends.

 

+

 

She needs to get him out here, that's what she knows, once her head clears. She couldn't help the others. That will always haunt her, she knows, how she couldn't stop that happened to them. They came and went and god knows what Hydra did to them and she couldn't do a thing.

"Thank you," Coulson says when she grabs his right arm and slips it over her shoulders, helping him walk on, holding him up. He's done a good job of patching up himself (there's no lack of medical equipment in this place) but Skye knows the injury is too serious. _She_ has to get him out of here.

"You're welcome," she replies, awkwardly, not knowing what the etiquette is when helping people out of Nazi compounds after they have been horribly tortured. "I have to warn you, though. I'm not exactly a team player."

The man nods. "You're doing just fine."

She looks around. The corridors are dim and there's not as much security they have to bypass around here.

"What are we doing here?" she asks. "I thought we were looking for a way out."

"Do you know anything about explosives?" he asks.

She narrows her eyes at him, not sure if she should be offended. "A bit," she admits. "But only in theory."

"If this map you drew is correct the radio tower is down that hall, and they don't have enough manpower to guard that as they should," he goes on. "Listen, Skye. My team is looking for me. But they can't find this place while Hydra jams our signals."

"What happened to the let's blow a hole in the wall and get the hell out of here plan?" she asks.

"This base is inside the Arctic circle."

Yeah no she doesn't want to die of hypothermia. Better than Whitehall, definitely, but that bar is way too low.

"Got it," Skye says. "So the plan is to blow up the radio tower and then a hole in the wall."

"Or..."

She raises an eyebrow at him. "Or?"

"There's enough explosives here to blow the whole thing to the ground. No more experiments."

And Skye thought _she_ was impulsive. She likes how he thinks, though.

"Okay, sure, why not, definitely," she smiles at her. "Radio. Hole in the wall. _Boom_."

 

+

 

She sits with Agent Coulson in the cargo area of the plane, after one the medics has pumped him full of blood again and stabilized him enough for the rest of the journey. They have thrown blankets and protective clothing on both of them but Skye can still feel the frostbite on her cheeks, she can still see it in the dark pink skin of the man's face. He looks tired but he no longer looks like he might die on her at any time – that was a real concern for her back there. They have also checked Skye and taken a lot of blood from her on Coulson's instructions because who knows what that stuff they gave her during prepping was. They are waiting for the results but Skye has the feeling it's going to be okay.

The humming of the plane flying them back to safety is relaxing and for a moment Skye thinks it's all some sort of dream; finding out about her origins from the very people who torn her family apart, being subjected to experiments, meeting this guy, blowing their way out here, it doesn't seem real at all. Not from where she is standing.

"We just blew up a Hydra laboratory," she blurts out. "We almost died."

For all her years fighting injustice from her podcasts and hacks Skye had never effected a change so big in the world. She doesn't know whether to feel proud or scared of herself.

Coulson smiles gently when she looks up. She is huddled against him, her face resting against his good arm, too exhausted to care about formalities. She just lived through a nightmare and she is not about to let go of the person who got her out.

"There are more laboratories, more Hydra," he says quietly.

It takes Skye a few seconds to realize what he means by that.

"You wanna hire me now?" she asks.

He chuckles. It makes the corners of his eyes creak, it makes him look younger. He looks at his own sorry state.

"I doubt I'm in a position of hiring anyone right now," he says. Skye still likes his sense of humor. "I'm just asking if you want to go fight some Nazis with me."

That's the best job offer Skye's ever heard.


	5. Afterlife

The SHIELD guy tries to sit up, coughing. She throws a warm arm over his chest to stop him.

"Not so fast," she says, trying to be gentle. "I think you'd better stay still."

He winces.

"Where am I?" he asks.

"That's a tricky one," she says.

" _What_?"

He slips in and out of consciousness and it takes her a while to be able to explain. She is still worried about his wounds, wishes they could get proper help, wishes she could bring her father in on it somehow. Cal would know what to do. Cal would want to help, if only he could set foot in this place.

"You saved a couple of our guys. Ethan? Lincoln? Do you remember?" she asks him gently.

"A bit," the man says, rubbing his temple. There's a big bruise hopefully healing all over his left temple. "Hydra had them."

"They were going to torture them and then kill them."

And probably dissect them and keep their organs in jars, she adds mentally, knowing that's her own fate if Hydra ever gets their hands on her. Knowing that's the reason her mother forbade her to go help Lincoln and Ethan, the reason she looked the way she did when that order was disobeyed anyway.

"What happened?" he asks.

He tries to sit up on the bed but his arms are too weak to prop himself up. She helps him with that, holding him up. The SHIELD man looks down at his own body, like he's realizing for the first time they had to change him into new clothes, his uniform ruined in the escape. She can feel his unease. Yeah, it can't be great to realize a group of strangers undressed you while you were unconscious, even if it was to treat your injuries. She hopes he's not too creeped out. She wants him to trust the people here.

"When me and my people went to save our friends we saw you trying to help them," she tells him. "You were badly injured and it didn't seem like you had any backup. You would have been toast if we left you there so I made the call to bring you with us."

He looks around. "Where am I?"

"It's a secret location. It's where my people come to be safe."

" _Your people_?"

"I think you guys call us gifteds."

She watches him think, put the pieces together in his mind, his brow wrinkled with the effort. She studies his face for the first time. He's old-ish but he has a nice, trustworthy face. Doesn't mean he is trustworthy, just because of his face, but what he did back there in the Hydra compound, _that_ makes him trustworthy in her eyes.

" _Hydra_ – that's what Hydra wanted, your abilities," he says.

"We call ourselves Inhumans," she explains. "SHIELD thought they'd better blow the place up instead of trying to get our guys out."

"The assault."

"You made a different call. You wanted to help us. That's why I brought you here."

"I remember now," he says. "You saved my life."

She smiles. The guy doesn't know just how unpopular that decision is around here. Everybody giving her the stink eye. Well, it's not the guy's fault, anyway. He's not responsible for hundreds of years of Inhuman isolationism and a very well-earned distrust of government organizations.

She puts another cushion behind his back, wanting him to be comfortable.

"My name's Skye. Well, _out there_ in your world it is, as my protection. In here it's Daisy. Daisy Johnson. But you can call me Skye," she says. She never knows herself. Daisy or Skye, she's somewhere between. Somewhere adrift between Afterlife and the world out there, between her mother and her father too, between Inhumans and the Rising Tide. She likes the idea that this stranger thinks of her as Skye.

"Coulson. Agent Coulson."

"Yeah, we know." He makes a confused expression. She shows him the ID they recovered in his clothes. 

"It's a lanyard," he says.

"SHIELD has been in our radar for a while," she tells him. "You guys tried to kidnap me when I was a baby."

The man's eyes widen in shock.

"We _what_?"

"Well, actually, that was Hydra," she explains. "But we didn't know there was a difference until this past year."

Agent Coulson lets out a tiny sad sigh.

"If it's any consolation neither did I," he says.

She chuckles in commiseration. 

Agent Coulson looks very tired all of the sudden.

She shouldn't have kept him awake this long. He has to rest. His other injuries are more or less manageable but the blow to the head they have to look out for.

"I should let you rest." 

"So I'm stuck here?" he asks her.

"For now," she replies. "We need to keep this place a secret, so we can't call someone for you. And we can't move you until you feel better."

"Okay," he says. He seems to accept it but he doesn't look happy about it. She is not surprised. They are unknown variables to him. He knows about gifteds and how dangerous they can be. Why should he trust some random girl who tells him he's been kidnapped for his own sake? And he's a SHIELD agent, he's probably trying to figure out the angles. That's what the others in Afterlife were concerned about, but Agent Coulson couldn't stand up and walk to the door on his own right now. They don't know anything about him but the one thing they know is that he risked his life to save a couple of their kind. That has to count for something, she decides.

She wants to trust him.

"Skye?" he calls when she's already walking to the door. She smiles a bit because she's never heard anyone call her that in this village and the way he says it has an immediately nice ring to it.

"Yes."

"Will you come back later? To visit me?" he asks her. His tone is not pressing but he does sound a bit hopeless. From what she's told him maybe he can gather that she is his only ally in this place. Maybe it's something else. He looks a bit scared.

She nods at him and leaves.

Her mother has put two guards outside the room.

 

+

 

It's strange to find herself taking care of a SHIELD person.

Since she was a kid SHIELD had been the bogeyman. It was a word whispered with fear. After Bahrain it became a word said between gritted teeth. Daisy had grown up with that fear. With the idea that some day guys in dark suits would come for her and tag her like a shark. She grew up and investigated. She went out into the world and looked into SHIELD on her own. A lot of what she found left a bad taste in her mouth. Others just didn't make sense, didn't line up with her parents' horror stories. Then the world learned about Hydra and Daisy understood a lot of things. Then she went to rescue Lincoln and Ethan from Hydra's claws and found that someone was trying to do the same – someone who shouldn't care about Inhuman lives. The bogeyman trying to help them.

Now she's here, the man locked up in a building apart from the rest of Afterlife. She keeps checking up on him every few hours, even though he is asleep most of the time. She studies that nice, trustworthy face when it's relaxed. Pressing a reluctant Lincoln to treat him. Arguing with her mother about why they should keep him here safe ("Hydra could be out there looking for him. We owe him." Jiaying's mouth twisting ugly at the idea, her expression softening immediately, conceding as if she were indulging her naive daughter – Daisy knows she's not naive, but she's willing to use that to protect the man who risked his life to help them – and telling her she'll make a decision in a couple of days).

 

+

 

It takes him a couple of days to recover enough from his wounds that he can stay awake for more than a couple of hours in a row. Lincoln is set on giving him the okay as soon as he can because nobody wants an agent of SHIELD around these parts. Except Skye. She sits with him while he gets better, trying to make the process a bit less boring.

She makes him grilled cheese. It's not very good but he eats it anyway.

She brings in some silly and easy boardgames, but she always beats him ("it's that damned ankle bone" he protests after failing Operation for the sixth time).

She tells him stories about the Inhumans – as much it's safe to tell a SHIELD guy. _Stories_ , not details or coordinates.

Gordon calls him her "human pet".

On the third day he can stand up and Skye takes him for a walk around Afterlife, so he can see the sights.

People stare a him, of course, but she relaxes one they are on the outskirts of the village and there's only mountain and fresh, icy air around them.

"Are you–? Are you the leader of this, Skye?" Agent Coulson asks her.

She laughs. "Me? Do I _look_ like the leader?"

He looks at her for a moment.

"Well, yes."

"Well, I'm not," she says, a bit embarrassed. "That'd be my mom."

"I see."

He sounds a bit disappointed, like he wanted her to be the leader of all this.

 

+

 

Daisy spends the rest of the time reading up on the guy – she trusts him, for some reason, but she thinks she can appease her mother's doubts and the population's distate for his presence if she can prove he's not that dangerous.

In his records she recognizes a lot of the incidents she had already studied. Puente Antiguo, that cover-up was all his. Daisy had even travelled there, in case the official statements were maybe hiding the involvement of an Inhuman they had no knowledge of. She got there a couple of days after the events and SHIELD had already covered all their tracks – it feels weird, a particular hollowness in the pit of her stomach, to think that her and Coulson almost crossed paths then.

SHIELD is easy to hack, but it takes a while. What he finds is twenty-five years of loyal service. A middleman, the field reports paint him as the amicable face of the shady organization. The very definition of those guys in dark suit she grew up fearing. But the more she reads about the stuff he's done the more she realizes those tales were not accurate. What kind of name is _Phillip_ anyway? She didn't mean to pry and when she finds files referencing his father's death she closes them immediately, feeling guilty.

 

+

 

"Agent Coulson," she says while they are talking one of their walks in silence.

"What?"

"How about something cooler? Like _A.C._?"

He looks amused. 

"Agent is so informal," she says.

"What about, uh, _Phil_?" he offers.

Something about it suddenly scares Skye, like that would be getting too close, getting attached too soon. She needs distance.

"What about just _Coulson_?" she asks.

He accepts and they continue walking it silence. It's hard for him but he pushes himself to get better (does he really want to leave so soon? not that she blames him, of course, it just stings a bit) and when they climb a bit higher to see the valley in its splendor Skye has to help him, grab his hand and pull him up.

When they reach one of the peaks they sit down for a snack and some hot coffee. 

"What?" she asks.

He's looking at her funny.

"You're not what I expected," he says.

"What you expected?"

"Of an individual enhanced by alien DNA who's grown up in this environment."

"Inhumans didn't ask for that, be _enhanced_ , for the record," she tells him. Since she was a kid she was taught to love _the gift_ , to consider it her birthright. But she kept wondering about the intentions of the blue angels who fell to give Inhumans their identity. She wondered why all the gifts they received were so dangerous. Some of them were horrifyingly so. Even the most harmless of their powers is still disturbing.

"You grew up here," Coulson says. "You don't seem too isolated."

Okay, fair enough, she knows quite a bit about him but he barely knows anything about her life outside her Inhuman heritage. It's easier playing the mysterious gifted (he doesn't even know what she can do) than admit she's mostly just a regular person, who has an identity in the same world he inhabits, who has friends and a van and eats too much junk food and has an ex-boyfriend and a small collection of DVDs. It's easier that this guy thinks she's different to anyone he's ever met. She doesn't know why but she wants to impress him.

"I get out a lot," she tells him. "To spend time with my father, he lives in the outside world."

"Why doesn't he live with you and your mother?"

She drops her gaze a moment. This is where she is not a normal person. Normal people have parents who divorce. She has parents who belong to two different, incompatible worlds. She knows that's her fate as well. She knows what she can and can't have. Why there are only _ex_ -boyfriends for her out there.

"Only people like us, only Inhumans are allowed in this place," she tells Coulson.

"Not even if there's a couple and– "

She shakes her head. "Not even that."

He's silent for a moment, nodding to himself.

"Pity," he comments.

"Well, well, Agent Coulson," Skye teases. "Are you flirting with me?"

Skye swears he is blushing. This old-ish guy from a powerful spy organization is blushing in front of her.

"Of course not," he says lamely.

 

+

 

Her mother requests an audience.

She's not sure why but it makes Daisy nervous, not being able to go with him. It's not like her mother is going to do anything to Coulson, of course. But she's nervous. Like she wants him to make a good impression. Which is ridiculous, it's not like she's introducing a boyfriend to her parents (her parents – she wonders, vaguely, what Cal is up to these days, it's been a while since they saw each other; Daisy thinks he'd probably like Coulson). It seems like she will let him stay in Afterlife until he is recovered, but not one day more.

"You were right," Coulson says afterwards, looking a bit pale but smiling at Daisy. "She is a bit scary. I guess you get it from her."

 

+

 

The evenings are quiet in Afterlife. She decides to spend them keeping Coulson's company. She's glad for it. Most people in this place come and go, but Skye grew up here, and it's lovely and it's lonely. Coulson is a change. A good one.

"How's the soup?" she asks.

"Better than your grilled cheese," Coulson replies with a smile.

"Funny," rolling her eyes.

Well, it was from a can, she didn't have to cook anything this time, so the joke's on him. She would ask Gordon to bring them so tasty takeout but she's pretty sure Gordon won't like it.

"Can I ask you a question about your mother?" he says.

"Is about her scars?" 

He nods. "Was that Hydra?"

"Yeah," she says, dropping his gaze. "My father tried to bring her back – and he did but..."

" _Skye_?"

"He once told me that he thought my mom had come back wrong," she tells Coulson. Maybe because he's a stranger. "I don't know what that means."

And there are times when she looks at Jiaying and... But she can't think about that. She feels something ugly and sad building up in the pit of her stomach.

Then suddenly he feels Coulson's hand covering hers, squeezing her fingers. She looks up at him, surprised and grateful for the gesture.

"I'm so sorry for what happened to your family," he says softly.

"Well, it's not your fault."

"I don't know. Maybe if SHIELD had dicovered Hydra's infiltration earlier. Decades earlier. They would have never gotten to your mother. I feel _responsible_."

She thinks: if this is what being a SHIELD agent means, maybe that's not so bad after all.

 

+

 

The morning of the day he has to finally leave Afterlife Daisy brings him to a far spot in the mountains.

"This is where I learned to control my powers when I transformed," she says. "I was fourteen."

"Your powers," Coulson repeats. She knows he is well aware of of how Inhumans work, yet he hasn't even asked about her gift.

"Vibrations," she explains. "Everything in this universe vibrates. And I can tap into that."

He doesn't understand, of course. It's hard to put into words. 

She tells him to look at the hill in front of them. She raises her hand. She remembers when Jiaying took her after she transformed – she remembers the pain of those days – and told her that out here she couldn't hurt anyone. Here, on this spot, is where she learned to _love_ her powers and for some reason she wants to share that with Coulson. She listens to the vibrations of the mountain and starts changing them slowly.

Coulson watches as the snow begins to slide down the mountain, a proper avalanche.

Daisy lets it go on for a while – his gaze moving from the snow to her hand and back again with a stunned, pleased expression – and then she drops her arm, letting go of the energy of the mountain.

"You just _moved a mountain_ ," he says, breathless.

For all of the elders' stories, for all of her mother's pride, some days Daisy still feels like she did when she first transformed, that this is _a curse_ and not a gift but this SHIELD guy's face light up and in a moment she knows today is not going to be one of those days.

 

+

 

In the afternoon she has to bring him to Gordon so he can take him back to SHIELD, to his people. Skye is a bit bummed about it (okay, _a lot_ bummed) but she knows the longer Coulson stays the more danger he's in. Jiaying has already started to question the sanity of Skye's original decision to save his life, just from seeing him roam through the village with Skye like it was his home too.

They have been skirting the issue of Hydra's plans, SHIELD's plans (they didn't care about rescuing the Inhumans, after all, just the strategic value of destroying an enemy's base), the climate of fear in Afterlife itself.

"There's a storm coming, Skye," Coulson says, with that furrowed brow again. "And good people, people like you, are going to get caught up in the middle."

"I know," she says. "My mother, she... she is doing what she thinks it's best to protect us, to lead us. But I don't think she's leading us in the right direction."

That's a pretty big thing to admit to someone else. She has been having trouble admitting it to herself. Is it easier with an stranger? Except Coulson is not a stranger. He never was.

"My mother thinks people without abilities are not her responsibility."

Coulson searches her face. "But you don't agree."

"I've always felt like... _everybody_ is my responsibility. It doesn't matter who they are or what powers they have or they don't."

"You talk like a SHIELD agent," Coulson points out.

She slaps his arm lightly, leaving her fingers gently wrapped around it for a moment afterwards.

"Don't let anyone hear you say that," she teases him. "That's an insult around these parts."

"Maybe we can work together on this," Coulson says.

" _We_?"

"Yeah."

He tells her how to contact him in the outside world. It's a great risk he's taking, giving Skye that information (his organization has gone underground, kept in a location where not even Skye can hack her way into knowing), but it's only fair, she's taking a great risk just talking to him out here in the middle of the village.

He also gives her his ID, his lanyard, just in case she needs to prove she knows him. His fingers dart across the palm of her hand and she remember how he held it when she was sad the other night.

It's time to say goodbye.

"And Skye?" he says, turning around at the last moment.

"Yeah?"

"I _was_ flirting with you a little," he says, smiling a bit. She feels it again, the same strange vertigo as when she thought they might have met before. "But don't tell anyone. It was very unprofessional of me."

"You're secret's safe with me, _Phil_."

Seconds later she watches as Gordon unceremoniously takes him out of Afterlife in a flash of bright blue light.


End file.
